The game of poker is a multiplayer game that is widely played in many jurisdictions, particularly in the United States of America. In order to illustrate various advantageous features of multiplayer games, the basic rules of poker will be outlined briefly in the description that follows.
A traditional game of poker generally accommodates a minimum of 4 and a maximum of between 8 and 10 players. In a turn of the game, one of the participating players assumes the role of a dealer and deals five cards (an “initial hand”), from a conventional deck of 52 playing cards, to each participating player, inclusive of the dealer. The playing cards in the initial hand are dealt face down to each player who does not, at this stage of the game, disclose the playing cards that have been dealt to him.
Each one of the players is then required to decide, in turn, whether to continue with his participation in the turn of the game (that is, to “play”), or to terminate his participation in the turn (that is, to “fold”), as a function of the playing cards in his initial hand. Any player who decides to fold does not participate any longer in the turn of the game. If all participating players decide to fold, the turn of the game terminates. The first player to decide to play is required to make an opening wager on the turn of the game. Any other player who subsequently also decides to play in the turn of the game is required to match or to increase (“raise”) the size of the opening wager. When the size of the opening wager is raised, players who have made prior opening wagers are required to top up their wagers to match the size of the largest opening wager made by any player who has elected to play in the turn of the game. This phase of the turn of the game continues until every player who desires to play in that turn has made an equivalent opening, wager.
All the wagers made by each of the players are accumulated in a single jackpot (“the pot”).
At this stage of the game, each player who has decided to play may, in turn, then decide to retain (that is, to “hold”) any number of the cards in his initial hand. Once a player has decided which, if any, of the five cards to hold, the player may then “draw”, in which the remaining cards of the initial hand are discarded and are replaced by an equivalent number of further cards dealt by the dealer from the deck of playing cards. This phase of the game will be referred to, for convenience, as the drawing phase. If the player does not hold any of the cards, in his initial hand, he is then effectively dealt an entirely new hand of five cards at the drawing phase of the game. On the other hand, if a particular player holds all of the five cards in his initial hand, he does not participate in the drawing phase, but still continues to play in the turn of the game.
Once the drawing phase of the game has been completed, each player evaluates the five cards he has accumulated in the manner described above in order to determine whether they contain any one of a number of desirable combinations of playing cards. The desirability of any combination of playing cards is inversely proportional to the probability of being dealt that particular combination of cards.
After completion of the drawing phase of a turn of the game and evaluation of the playing cards, all of the players who have previously decided to play in the particular turn of the game are then again required to decide, in turn, as a function of the playing cards they have accumulated in the manner described above, whether to continue playing or to fold. Any player who decides to fold does not participate any further in the particular turn of the game and forfeits all wagers he has made in that turn. The first player who makes an opening wager may, if he decides to play, make a supplementary wager on the turn of the game. Any other player who also decides to play is required to match or to raise the size of the supplementary wager. Players who have previously made supplementary wagers are required to top up their supplementary wagers to match the size of the largest supplementary wager. This phase of the particular turn of the game continues until every player who has not folded has made an equivalent supplementary wager. This stage of the game will be referred to, for convenience, as the supplementary wagering stage.
The supplementary wagers made by each of the players who have decided to continue playing in the particular turn of the game are added to the pot.
Once the supplementary wagering stage of the turn of the game has been completed, the players who remain in the game reveal the playing cards in their hands. The hands are compared, and the player with the highest-ranking desirable hand wins the accumulated pot.
The rules of the game of poker have been described with particular reference to a variation of the game known as “draw poker”. There are many other variations of the game of poker that are not germane to the essence of the invention and that will not, for this reason, be described here in detail.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in that art that the game of poker is a zero-sum game insofar as, in each turn of the game, a gain of the winner is equal to accumulated losses of the other players in the game. It is, however, also known for a party who arranges or hosts a game of poker to levy a commission (“a rake”) on the players or on the accumulated jackpot in order to obtain revenue.
The game of poker is played at both land-based venues and on-line, in the latter instance by means of the Internet. Where the game is played on-line, a software program spawns multiple instances of the game, each instance being known as a “poker room”, to accommodate players wishing to participate in the game. Thus, any instance of the game, or poker room, accommodates participating players who may be geographically remote from each other. The software program offers the participating players with various artifices such as, for example, a chat facility, which allow the players to interact with each other, thereby establishing a sense of community such as would be found at a game being played at a land-based venue.
The game of slots is probably the most popular and widely played single-player casino game available to players. The most common game of slots is found in a simple three-reel slot machine. Each reel of the slot machine has, say, 30 indexed positions, some or all of which may display a corresponding indicium. A player of the slot machine is required to place a wager on an outcome of the casino game by introducing coins, tokens or credit into the slot machine, which then enables each of the three reels to be spun and to come to rest at any of the indexed positions. An outcome of the game is determined as a function of a combination of the three resulting indexed rest positions. Several outcomes of the game usually result in the player being awarded corresponding prizes, one particular outcome causing the player to win a jackpot prize. A slot machine with the particular characteristics described above has a jackpot cycle of 27 000, which means that, on average, 27 000 outcomes of the game must be determined in order for the jackpot to be won by the player.
The three reel slot machine described above may be a free-standing electro-mechanical or electronic machine suitable for use in a land-based venue, or may, alternatively, be an on-line implementation, where the three reels of the slot machine are simulated on a display monitor, while an outcome of the game is derived from a random number generator implemented in software. It will be appreciated that the game of slots is a single-player game, unlike the game of poker described above. Although banks of slot machines may be found in land-based casinos, each player at such a bank of machines is playing the game individually for himself. An advantage of such single-player games is that of rapid play and the immediacy of a result in a turn of a game.
It is desirable to combine the immediacy of a single-player casino game with the community aspects that are obtainable in a multiplayer poker game.